Day of Rest 3-25-12

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), was renowned as the “Father of the Science of Hydrostatics.” He helped establish the principles of hydrodynamics and made invaluable contributions in the areas of mathematical treatment of conic sections, the theory of probability, and differential calculus, with the invention of Pascal’s triangle for calculating coefficients of binomial expansion. He also helped develop the barometer through his discoveries in fluid mechanics, known as “Pascal’s Principle.”

In his work, Thoughts, Letters, and Opuscules, Blaise Pascal declared:

“We know God only through Jesus Christ. Without this Mediator, is taken away all communication with God; through Jesus Christ we know God. All those who have pretended to know God, and prove Him without Jesus Christ, have only had impotent proofs.

But, to prove Jesus Christ we have the prophecies which are good and valid proofs. And those prophecies, being fulfilled, and truly proved by the event, indicate the certainty of these truths, and therefore the truth of the divinity of Jesus Christ. In Him, and by Him, then, we know God. Otherwise, and without Scripture, without original sin, without a necessary Mediator, we can not absolutely prove God, nor teach good doctrine and sound morals.

But by Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ, we prove God and teach doctrine and morals. Jesus Christ, then, is the true God of men. Not only do we know God only through Jesus Christ, be we know ourselves only through Jesus Christ.

We know life, death, only through Jesus Christ. Except by Jesus Christ we know not what life is, what our death is, what God is, what we ourselves are. Thus, without Scripture, which has only Jesus Christ for its object, we know nothing, and we see not only obscurity and confusion in the nature of God, but in nature herself. Without Jesus Christ, man must be in sin and misery; with Jesus Christ, man is exempt from sin and misery. In Him is all our virtue, and all our felicity. Out of Him, there is nothing but sin, misery, error, darkness, death and despair.”

After His death, this writing was found in Pascal’s effects:

“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” not of philosophers and scholars.